The Becoming

Kushiel wrote:

The reason is that the cards that get changed in playtest are the ones that are too strong. Those get lots of attention across multiple rounds of playtesting, because it's far worse for any CCG to have a brokenly-good element released into the wild than an element that's not particularly good. And since there's a limited amount of time and effort available to be expended on changing cards, and that effort gets expended on fixing the stuff that's way too good, the stuff that's not Tier One gets ignored.

I have been involved as playtester in all but 1 set from VTES/DS to LoB (we missed CE).
In the WW-era, playtesting has always been the same, 3 rounds with a summary and no discussions.

The thing is, you could catch 90% of the over- and underpowered cards just by reading the files. Any experienced player with a firm grasp of the rules and the costing concept could do that. And still those underpowered cards that got pointed out and got possible fixes for them presented remained how they were.
That is sloppy playtest-coordination at best.

Take some cards from FN: Tortured Confession, Relentless Pursuit, Pseudo Blindness, Fleecing the Gaje, etc.

And coming back on topic, The Becoming is definitly not properly costed, as the huge opportunity cost is not factored in in a reasonable way. Sure, 3rd Tradition is cheaper and better as it needs P/J. But you should only play The Becoming if you have at least one skill card in hand (otherwise it's a wasted action!). The more the game progresses, the less are the chances to have a skill card in hand. This could have been mitigated somewhat.

Balancing a card can be sometimes tough. But listening to playtesters is not. If you don't like to listen, invite only automatons to playtesting.

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

KevinM wrote:

I will bet you a $20 dinner somewhere that you will average less than 2.0 VP per game and not be able to get a single GW with any Shock Troops deck that you care to field.

I quickly looked at some of the VP rates for the best players in the world. They seem to average about 2 VP per game played (back of the envelope calculation).

Actually, the "less than 2 VP" average is just throwing you a bone. The second (and more relevant) part of his proposal is "not get a single Gamw Win". All you need to do is get one single Game Win with a Shock Troops deck and you got yourself a pizza.

Now, since it is theoretically possible to not get a gamewin when you score 2 VP, Kevin is giving you an extra shot by accepting an average of 2 VP per game as well.